BENNET, ROBERT (d. 1617), bishop of Hereford, was the son of Leonard Bennet of Baldock, Hertfordshire. He was one of Whitgift's pupils at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was admitted minor fellow of that society on 8 Sept. 1567, and major fellow on 7 April 1570. On 15 July 1572, being then three years a B.A., he was incorporated at Oxford. He was chaplain to Lord Burghley. In 1583 he was master of the hospital of St. Cross, Winchester. On 24 Jan. of the following year, the day after the death of Watson, bishop of Winchester, he wrote a letter to the lord treasurer on the state of the diocese, declaring that it was overrun with seminarists and in sore need of jurisdiction, and expressing his hope that a wise successor would be appointed to the late bishop. Meanwhile, he advises that the dean be admonished to keep hospitality (Strype, Whitgift, ii. 261). In 1595 he was appointed Dean of Windsor, and on the Feast of St. George in the following year he was constituted a sworn registrar of the order of the Garter. He was consecrated to the see of Hereford on 20 Feb. 1602-3. He increased and adorned the buildings of the see. His only literary work appears to have been a Latin preface to a translation by William Whitaker, his friend and colleague at Trinity, of Bishop Jewell's 'Defense against Father Harding,' Geneva, 1585, fol. He was, Strype says, a good and learned man. He died on 25 Oct. 1617.